South Africa is a complicated country. It
has a long history of dealing with conflict, and is still rather dangerous. One
wouldn’t want to walk through the wrong neighbourhood at the wrong time, I’ll
tell you that.
Marketing in South Africa is also
complicated. Not because it is overly hard to bring your public onto the local
market, or to appeal to the public on a big scale, but because of the
underlying history. Unless you use multiple kinds of people in the same
campaign at the same time, you will probably not succeed in appealing to the
entire public at once. And when you try to market in segments, you need to be
very careful where you tread. South Africa is not an especially tolerant
country, and often, there will still be issues regarding racial division. Although the advertisement industry says it's changed, it's still in the hands of a few rich (white) men.
So marketing will not be overly easy. It
won’t be horrible (if you don’t do anything offensive or politically incorrect), but it
won’t be easy. I do happen to have some advice for those of you that would like
to expand their market.
If you want to market your product, strategise your marketing according to at least 2 segments: black people, and white people. This will inevitably make your life as a marketeer easier, no matter how you feel about it. Marketing campaigns towards white people are often more or less the same as anywhere else, but marketing black people is highly stereotypical. There are then 2 choices you can choose from; either you go with stereotypes, black people singing and dancing or something like that, or you do your research and adapt your marketing campaign to the 'real' black population of South Africa. This last option is unusual, and would therefore draw more attention to your product, however, it will be much harder to find a creative director that can actually do it. Most creative directors in South Africa choose to evade option 2 entirely, and end up with the stereotypes I mentioned earlier.
Sources:
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-16-south-africas-great-advertising-divide/#.UX4FSL9CDKY
http://www.clamouronline.com/2012/01/02/the-south-african-advertising-industry-the-last-colonial-outpost/
If you want to market your product, strategise your marketing according to at least 2 segments: black people, and white people. This will inevitably make your life as a marketeer easier, no matter how you feel about it. Marketing campaigns towards white people are often more or less the same as anywhere else, but marketing black people is highly stereotypical. There are then 2 choices you can choose from; either you go with stereotypes, black people singing and dancing or something like that, or you do your research and adapt your marketing campaign to the 'real' black population of South Africa. This last option is unusual, and would therefore draw more attention to your product, however, it will be much harder to find a creative director that can actually do it. Most creative directors in South Africa choose to evade option 2 entirely, and end up with the stereotypes I mentioned earlier.
Sources:
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-08-16-south-africas-great-advertising-divide/#.UX4FSL9CDKY
http://www.clamouronline.com/2012/01/02/the-south-african-advertising-industry-the-last-colonial-outpost/
No comments:
Post a Comment